You need to know how to create better products for your clients
How to eavesdrop on your customer so you can grow your business
Open your ears and listen to your customers. They are your best creators for your products or services. Instead of creating something and then finding customers now is easier and easier to eavesdrop on your customers and create something they truly want and need!
In an article published some years ago in Wall Street Journal, Lululemon was crushing their competition pulling in over $1.800 per square foot of retail space. Their secret sauce:
Lululemon stokes demand by keeping inventory scarce and setting up stores so employees can eavesdrop on shoppers - Dana Mattioli
They created a space where employees can eavesdrop on their customers. This allowed them to always know how they can improve, what products customers like and what they dislike. Acting on this information allowed them to grow very fast. Now Lululemon has over 400 locations and had $2.65 billion revenue in 2017.
Eavesdropping on their customers allowed Lululemon to discover a lot of golden nuggets. For example, in one story the CEO heard someone complaining while trying on a sweater that the sleeves are too tight. Actually, that sweater was a product that was not selling really well. At that point, the CEO pulled back that sweater model and redesign it with larger sleeves. Next year, the new sweater sold like crazy and people loved it!
Now almost all stores you go visit have a tablet where you could add a suggestion or a claim or you could at least push a button if the staff was friendly to you. Lululemon was doing that years ago when this was not a trend yet.
How could you eavesdrop on your customers in order to grow your business and create better product and services for them?
The rest of the article is going to answer the question above.
What can you do offline
Offline you have to have well-trained salespeople that are great listeners and like to help people. If you can make your people to always actively listen, ask open-ended questions and be prepared to take notes you will grow your business faster and create products that people actually want to consume.
Leading question: “Don’t you just love the Victorian style?”
Open-ended question: “What do you think of the property?”
In the example above, the first question actually implies an answer. This question is very bad for your sale because if you talk to someone who is not fond of the Victorian style, he will run away from you and your business. If you really want to know your customer’s opinion about Victorian houses try using something like this: “How do you feel about Victorian homes?”. Here you can change Victorian style and homes with whatever you want. You can ask about your industry, your products or your services.
The second question does not imply an answer. It allows the customer to come up with their own opinion and pinpoint exactly what they like and dislike about it. Using open-ended questions is going to help you learn more about your client pain points and come up with a solution to their problems.
We’ve had three big ideas at Amazon that we’ve stuck with for 18 years, and they’re the reason we’re successful: Put the customer first. Invent. And be patient. — Jeff Bezos
What can you do online
1. Email
With email, you can be very direct and if you already have a customers email database you will find it very easy to send them a message asking them questions. One of the best questions I found has been used by socialtriggers.com. After someone signed up to with their email address, they send an email with a short description of what they do and how they help people and at the end in the “P.s.” section they asked people to reply to that email and answer the question “What are you struggling with right now online?”. After the question, they also added “it doesn’t matter how small you think your problem is. We read all the emails!” This will entice people to start sharing and you will have a lot of information about what people are struggling with.
A couple of months ago I published an article about the importance of the first email a customer receives from you. If you want to create an email that will make someone ask “How can I get more value from this business?” click the link below…
2. Facebook
On Facebook, you can still find people of all ages and from all categories. It doesn’t matter what you sell, there is probably 10–20 groups that are interested in your product or service. Join these groups and start providing value, posting an article and interacting for 20–30 minutes a day. When you see that people like your posts or comment or share them, open a conversation. This will get people to share more and if you ask the right questions you will be able to get all the information you need in order to create better products or services.
Business has only two functions — marketing and innovation. Milan Kundera
3. Surveys
Surveys can work very good with all kind of traffic. You can have someone from Facebook, Twitter or from your email list complete a survey if you know how to ask nicely and appear to the human side in them.
In one study, when researchers approached individuals and asked for help with a marketing survey, only 29% agreed to participate. But, if the researchers approached the second sample of individuals and preceded that request with a simple, pre-suasive question, “Do you consider yourself a helpful person?” now 77.3% volunteered. Why? When asked before the request if they were helpful, nearly everyone answered yes. Then, when the request occurred, most agreed to participate in order to be consistent with the recently activated idea of themselves as helpful people. — Robert Cialdini Pre-Suasion
Start with a question that implies a good train in your customer or just use the question above before you ask someone to complete a survey for you.
When conducting a survey keep it short and simple. Try not to have more than 10 questions and give people yes/no questions. Yes/no questions don’t tell you the whole story. Instead, use questions with at least 3 answers and one box where they can complete their own answer.
Bonus — 7 questions you can use freely in your business:
- What frustrates you most about [industry x]?
- What kind of problems did you encounter when working with [someone like you]?
- What information would you have liked to have before purchasing?
- What features of this product or service are most important for you?
- Would you like to add something to this product or service that could make your life easier?
- When you got your [x product/service], what convinced you to buy that one? — This question can be adapted if you talk with people that are already your customers!
- If you could get a better product that would have [x,y,z, the answer to question #5 ] would you buy it?
What can you do today?
Think of everything you read today and ask yourself where can I apply some of these questions in my marketing mix. After that do a meeting with your salespeople and teach them how to eavesdrop your customer.
Many business owners have the illusion they know everything about their customers and surprisingly… they don’t!
Start connecting with your target audience on social media and invite them to complete a survey you design using the questions Robert Cialdini talked about and if you want to discover more ways to grow your profits get my free gift below 👇👇👇
👉 Lastly, please tap or click the “👏” button to help others discover this article and learn these techniques. If you share it with a friend, he will grow his business and thank you for recommending it!
This story is published in The Startup, Medium’s largest entrepreneurship publication followed by +394,714 people.
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